It is an ode to the constancy of local creative adaptations, experiments, expansions and contractions. In a broader context, PODzome marks change, flux, and mobility in and around our city. Its artists are engaged in urban, creative, and organic rhizomatic networks, which exist 'in the middle of things'1. PODzome is also a formal 'hat doffing' to the alliances and interconnections generated by and between organisations such as Octapod and the University of Newcastle.

PODzome also heralds the commencement of Newcastle's This is Not Art Festival, 'TiNA'. For almost two decades TiNA, considered one of Australia's leading contemporary emerging arts festivals, has facilitated the convergence of experimental and emerging artists, writers, performers, thinkers, musicians, dancers, arts workers, media makers and creative researchers in a kind of 'transart' ideas and resource exchange.

The University Gallery is delighted to host PODzome for PODspace, an arts initiative that has become an open structure, not fixed to a format or place – it regenerates and grows horizontally with offshoots popping up throughout Newcastle. Rhizome-like. Curated by Jen Denzin, former PODspace Director,PODzome features the work of Jen Denzin, Penny Dunstan, Maggie Hensel-Brown, Mandy Robinson, Eleanor Jane Robinson, Bree Sanders, Brooke Stevens, and Alison Smith.